Create a Room You Love, Part 1: Planning Your Room Makeover

Having just completed the One Room Challenge (you can see the home office makeover that I did here), I thought this would be a great time to share my process for doing room makeovers. I have done a lot of them over the years. It seems like as soon as I get done with all of the rooms in my house, I have grown tired of the first room and start all over again…so I have learned what works (and doesn’t work) when you’re trying to makeover a space to create a room you love.

There are 3 main phases of this process:

1. Planning – Decide what you want the room to function and feel like.

2. Designing – Figure out the room flow and layout.

3. Decorating – Do the work of re-doing your room.

This week’s post is all about the planning portion of doing a makeover. It isn’t the most glamorous (or the most fun) part of the project, but it is the most important. Without identifying what you want to do and feel while you’re in this room, you won’t be happy with the end results. So take your time going through these steps to make sure you have thought of everything.

Continue reading to learn the first step in to creating a room you love…planning your room makeover.

Start an Inspiration Board

The first step to re-doing a room is to get some inspiration for what you want it to look, feel and function like.

My favorite way to do this is to create a board on Pinterest specifically for my new room. Then every time I see a picture of a room, a product or a DIY project that I like, I pin it to that board.

Of course, you can also do an inspiration board the traditional way by cutting pictures out of magazines and catalogs…and then pinning them to a bulletin board.

The idea is to collect all of your ideas in one place so you can see them all at once.

Keep adding pictures as you run across them…this should be an ongoing activity throughout the project.

List Your Likes and Dislikes

Next go sit in the room that you are re-doing with a pen and paper (or a notepad app on your phone).

Make 2 lists:

1. Make a list of everything you dislike about the room. This can be anything in the room…furniture, paint color, accessories, flooring, curtains, functional issues…anything that annoys you about the current room.

2. Make a list of everything you love about the room. Again, make sure to include everything that is in the room, as well as what you normally do in the room, to come up with your list.

You will use these lists in future steps to figure out what you will keep and what will change.

Know the Purpose of the Room

Now make one more list which should include all of the things you want to be able to do in the room. You can have the best looking room in the world…if it doesn’t function the way you want it to, you won’t be happy with it.

This can be standard room functions (such as getting a good night’s sleep in a bedroom) but could also be things that are not always associated with this type of room (like being able to watch TV before going to bed).

Once you have your list, prioritize them…give them one of the following 3 ratings:

1. Have to do – sleeping in a bedroom would likely fall in this category

2. Want to do – maybe watching TV before you go to bed is really important to you

3. Nice to do – These would be things that it would be nice to do in this room, but you wouldn’t be really upset if you couldn’t fit them in…maybe you have another space in the house where that activity could take place.

Decide on the Look and Feel

In this step, you’re going to decide how you want to the room to feel. Do you want a cheerful exuberant room? A dramatic moody room? A calm relaxing room? A comfortable cozy room?

Next, add in some words for the look that you want…Glamorous? Funky? Sophisticated? Homey? Eclectic? Bohemian?

Look through the pictures on your inspiration board, and notice any trends that are there. Are there certain finishes that appear in more of the pictures? A room layout that you like a lot? Colors that appear often? Any other design elements that you are you drawn to? Make a note of these as they will help when you get to the design and decorate phases of the process.

Determine the Budget

The final step of the planning phase is to decide how much money you want to spend. Be realistic…if you can’t afford to buy a lot of new furniture then you will need to know this in the design phase so that you can work around it.

By now you should be pretty confident that you know the basics of how you want your room to feel and function.

Once you have completed these steps, continue on to phase 2 of the room makeover process…learning how to use this information to design a room you love!

Comments or questions on how to Create a Room You Love, Part 1: Planning Your Room Makeover? Tell us in the section below.

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